Monday, July 28, 2008

By Saturday morning, my son's fever had broken, and was nearly normal. He still had a sore throat, but I felt comfortable enough to leave him at home, so I could go to rehearsal in Des Moines. When I got home, he told me that he had white spots on his tonsils. By this time, we still hadn't heard the results of the strep culture, but I assumed that they would have called by then if it were positive. By this point, he was complaining about food like tomato soup burning his throat (I know, he insisted he wanted it, though). He also couldn't eat chicken noodle soup. Basically, I stocked up on banana pudding, chocolate ice cream, and chicken broth.

Sunday, still had the spots.

This morning, I had to go back to work, but I called the clinic to see if he needed to be seen again. The nurse called me back about 45 minutes later to tell me that he needed to come in, so they could double-check to make sure he doesn't have MONO. At this point, I'm two steps away from freaking out at the thought, as school starts in a month, marching band in a couple of weeks, faire in five weeks.

After stewing in the waiting room for awhile, and then discovering that he's already lost two pounds, the doc breezed in, took one look at his throat, and said...

"Hand, foot, and mouth disease. The spots on his throat and tonsils are canker sores, which explains why it hurts a lot to eat. He'll be back to normal in a couple of days." She went on to explain that teens don't get it as badly as younger children, he may luck out and only have the sore throat.

And that was it.

After talking with my mom, she googled HFMD, and of course got the scary CDC explanation. This is apparently highly contagious. Soooo, I am disinfecting the whole house, have bought paper plates, bowls, and disposable cups and utensils for him to use, plus paper towels so he doesn't have to use the hand towels and washrags.

At least 2 more days until this is over, and he can be contagious for more than a week after, although not as much as during the first week.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

I have to get up at 3:20 to give my son another dose of tylenol, to keep his fever down. He's been running a fever of about 101°F with the tylenol, and about 102 without it. The last reading before the last dose of tylenol, however, was 102.9°F. My plans of letting him sleep all night to get recharged have changed. I am not risking having that fever be that high for several hours. No way, not good. I'm just glad he's 14 and not 4 at this point, so he's really helping out by resting and doing what he needs to do to get better.

The doc says that it's most likely a virus causing the headache, muscle pain, slight sore throat and high fever. The quick strep test came back negative, and the results from the longer culture should come tomorrow or Sunday. For now, all I can do is keep him hydrated, and giving tylenol to keep the fever down to a manageable level.

I am pretty sure that things will be better tomorrow morning, but it's still shocking to see that high a number on a thermometer...

The rest of the call was short and sweet, as she was working through the list of people to call.

And all I could think about was when she was a small, sweet little baby who had a habit of wanting to be up too late. I'd feed her the 10:30 bottle, so Mom could sleep, since I was a night owl, too. I remember introducing her to scary movies, probably too young, but she liked this certain living dead movie that we'd laugh, and laugh about. And how her favorite song when she was 3 was "Pour some sugar on me", and she'd freak out whenever the video came up on MTV (you know, back when it was MUSIC television, and not a haven for bad reality shows).

Thursday, July 10, 2008

I'm to the point where I'm not sure what I'd do if I actually got more than 5 hours of sleep a night.

I'm sure, however, that I'd be a lot more productive if I didn't feel like I wanted to go to sleep at 6 pm. I have massive amounts of sewing to do for the fall (mostly for other people), and I really don't need insomnia to rear its ugly head right now.

I'm off to try to get to sleep sometime before 1 a.m., and hopefully stay that way...